Fifty Shades of Earl Grey #ThrowbackThursday #humor #England

A friend who was visiting from America put a teabag into a cup of water and stuck it in the microwave. As I was explaining to her all the ways that was wrong, I mentioned that I accidentally committed a tea party once. A real one, with cucumber sandwiches and a proper aspidistra.

My last tea party

Of course, I’ve attended other tea parties. But the guests tended to have names like Mr. Bear and Miss Dolly. So when the friend who owned the castle I was living in suggested we do a proper afternoon tea in support of our annual village charity, I had to remind her that as an American, I’m tea-impaired. I had already been living in her medieval castle in the north of England for a couple of years, but all I really knew about tea at that point was the following:

Builders Tea: so called because anyone – but especially builders – who comes to your house to do any sort of job will be physically incapable of completing their task until they have demanded, received, and consumed at least one cup of black tea. They will also expect biscuits, but relax. Although everyone I knew when we lived in Virginia would shudder, this does not mean fluffy, buttery rolls. It doesn’t even really mean cookies, at least not in the American ginormous-chocolate-chip-and/or-nut-crammed-cardiac-event-waiting-to-happen sense of the word. Pretty much any flat carbohydrate will do nicely here.

Tea-time: any late afternoon time between three and six o’clock when you might try to drive somewhere but can’t because of the tea-time traffic, try to contact a business but can’t because of their tea-time break, or try to talk to your builders but can’t because they are in my kitchen drinking tea-time black sludge. With biscuits.

Tea-menu: tea plus teeny little bits of bread or scones with butter and jam. NOT jelly, because here in England that’s the name for the gelatinous substance you put into ice-cube trays and make into vodka shooters. (Since, here in England, you’re never going to need those trays for actual ice, of course.)

Cream Tea-menu: #3 plus clotted cream, one of the great taste inventions ever. (Sadly, however, minus the vodka shooters.)

High tea: something they only have in posh American hotels where they try to sneak actual food onto the tea menu.

Tea parties for pets? How is that a thing? Even in England?

Tea without Tea: When I picked up my dog from the kennel, I was assured that she had already finished her tea. Apparently anything consumed late in the afternoon qualifies here, and actually her dogfood probably tastes better than most tea biscuits.

But really, I asked my friend, how hard could it be to slap a teabag into a mug of hot water and add a couple of biscuits on the side? She turned pale, and decided we’d need more people. A week later I faced the Tea Party Committee. The Committee was polite. The Committee was firm. The Committee was not going to let me anywhere near actual tea-making. The castle where I lived was about a thousand years old, but the latest round of renovations dated to Victorian days. So The Committee decreed that our tea party would have to be a proper Victorian presentation: bone china teacups, linens, and tiny cloth napkins. We would need waitresses in white aprons and little caps pushing properly-squeaky trolleys (serving carts). We would need a pianist. And, of course, an aspidistra to put in front of the piano. And most of all, we would need teapots. Lots of teapots.

What Tea is not: Iced. Especially not Long Island Iced Tea. A darn shame, if you ask me…

Luckily, I was able to give them good news about my sandwich research. There is now a Costco nearby, and they would do us up trays of hearty sandwiches – roast beef, ham, turkey, cheese – on a variety of breads. The Committee looked a bit shaken, but stayed strong. No meat could contaminate our tea. Sandwiches must be made from cucumber so thinly sliced that one would probably serve the hundreds of people we were expecting. The only other sandwich choice would be egg and mayonnaise. Plus we’d need lots of scones.The Committee eyed me dubiously. Sadly, most of them were victims of my earlier scone attempts when it was my serving turn for Village Coffee. They decided to solicit contributions from their more reliable village bakers. In a generous moment of reconciliation, however, they did grant me permission to bake hundreds of mini American muffins (cupcakes) for the pudding (dessert).

The Committee had me on the ropes, but I came back strong. “What about flowers? Should I order those?” The Committee looked like I’d suggested putting murdered puppies on each table. “BUY flowers? In summer?“ As if our village couldn’t even garden? O the shame!

I spent the next weeks scouring eBay and local charity shops for china tea cups, and going to the sixty or so households in our little village to borrow teapots. In an amazing burst of generousity, the scones, tablecloths, napkins, and offers to help rolled in. The day before, people showed up with massive armloads of flowers and arranged them. The piano was tuned and aspidistra installed. Tables filled the castle ballroom, each with a linen cloth. The teenaged waitresses we’d recruited eyed their little white caps and lacy aprons with horror, but—English girls are so well brought up—each put hers on, at least for the photos. And, miraculously, we had almost fifty teapots, in which, the Committee informed me firmly, I would NOT be permitted to make any tea. They figured the place I could do least damage was showing people to their table.

And the people came! They bravely consumed gallons of tea, cheerfully tucked into microscopic sandwiches, and dutifully purchased extra ‘puddings’ from the cake stall. In the end, we raised respectable amounts for our charity. But better still, I know where all those teapots live and I’m so ready for the next tea party.

NOTE FROM BARB: There was one completely unexpected tea-party outcome—a royal one. Come back next Thursday to hear all about it!

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The thing is, we don’t have proper tea time very often (with all the mini sandwiches and scones) that is why so many people turned up. I always thought high tea was more of a thing for tourists. Most of the times I have been to a posh high tea it is because a foreign friend is visiting the UK and wants to try something traditional.

Then, things are more complicated because to lots of people “tea time” just means “dinner time.” They aren’t actually having tea. When you ask a friend round for tea, that’s asking them around for dinner (if it’s in the evening) or a cuppa if it’s earlier in the day. Hmmm…now I think about it, I can see why that’d be confusing.

Brilliant, Barb, but I must correct you on your definition of High Tea. It isn’t only posh American Hotels but also in ordinary Scottish cafes. It’s for that time around 5-ish and consists of fish and chips or poached eggs in mince (don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it) with bread and butter. A cake stand is placed in the centre of the table for after the fish and chips are finished. This holds scones and pancakes and small cakes, sometimes with meringues as the main item. This High Tea keeps one going until breakfast the next day. Thinking about it now, I wonder if pre-theatre menus might have replaced it to a certain extent.

What is an “aspidistra”? I couldn’t tell from the picture. They were either big rocks or a swan made out of a very large napkin.
Couldn’t help laughing the entire way through this. I’m not very good at parties and my friends have long since kept me out of the planning stages. Glad to hear that I’m not alone.

An ‘Aspidistra’ is a plant. I believe that Barb was hinting that tea that was not up to standards was surreptitiously poured into the potted plant.

Aspidistras are unusual in that they are both indoor and outdoor plants. I am a big fan of the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series. Mrs. Hudson was always rearrangiing the plants. In one scene, Holmes shouts at her as she departs with a plant, ‘Not the Aspidistra!’ but she ignores him. 🙂

Ichabod is absolutely correct. The aspidistra is a particularly hideous but unkilllable plant which no proper Victorian tea occasion could be without. Luckily it can survive indifferent watering, the occasional cup of tepid tea, and the Stygian gloom of the typical Victorian parlour.

When we lived in Virginia, I was often a victim of sweet tea. (How is it possible that anyone in the South isn’t diabetic?) But I confess to a craving at the height of summer. I tried to order it in Spain last summer when temps hit triple digits (Fahrenheit of course) but ended up with a cup of hot water, a teabag, and a tall glass with four ice cubes.

One thing every foodie should have on bucket list is tea at Betty’s in Yorkshire. Their Fat Rascal scones–made to super-secret heirloom recipe–are the stuff of (carb) dreams! When you make it over across the pond, I’ll have to take you there.

The microwave part made me cringe. Easter, last year, I was staying with my family in Malta and my aunt put her mug in the microwave to heat her tea up…. NO NO NO NO NO this is just wrong on so many levels! Coffee in the microwave, yeah ok, go for it but never ever tea! I told her when she is over here I will be hiding the microwave and if her tea is cold she can throw it out and make another one that is HOT and FRESH! Bleugh

Barb a lovely post, even if slightly… wobbly. You see high tea was / is very different from afternoon tea. Afternoon tea is what you so eloquently attended. With warmed plump china pots loose leaf tea jugs of millk and sugar cubes with tongs. All the above served with a crustless cucumber sandwich cut diagonally into four. This takes place in the homes of the upper to middle classes in the afternoon between luncheon and dinner, mostly to show off your wealth as tea was so utterly expensive.
Now the poorer working class folk deemed impossible to wait until 8 to eat dinner, because most had been working since dawn . And so high tea was born, it was called this because it was taken at height… At the table and was a light meal washed down with tea. This Teatime came about 5 to fill the workers stomachs prepare them for the next round of work.
Your soiree sounds wonderful and leaves me wondering where my invite went! sniff enough to give me the vapours swoons elegantly to the chaise

You won’t believe this, but several friends have expressed the hope that living here will teach me how to speak English.

“An Englishman’s way of speaking absolutely classifies him,
The moment he talks he makes some other
Englishman despise him.
One common language I’m afraid we’ll never get.
Oh, why can’t the English learn to
set a good example to people whose
English is painful to your ears?
The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears.
There even are places where English completely
disappears.
Why, in America, they haven’t used it for years!” (–My Fair Lady)

One would have to disagree the vagaries of The English language are but in the mind ofvthose who think they can speak it. Andrew you speak Americain which is as different as a cream tea is to a biscuit and gravy.

You’ve missed one out in your definitions, though not quite so relevant!!! It’s a class thing, which, of course, you Americans don’t understand at all, because you think class is about money, ha ha ha!!! Up here in the north east, where most people are of the working class who would, originally have worked in the shipyards, what I would call ‘dinner’ is called tea. ‘Dinner’ is what you have at lunch time. One year I told my mother in law, on my birthday, that Husband and I were going out for dinner. She rang me in the afternoon to find out if we’d had a nice time.

That’s it, basically – working class have breakfast, dinner and tea, middle class has breakfast, lunch and dinner. It’s partly a north-south thing, but that may be because there are more people who worked in lost industries in the north (shipbuilding, coal mining, cotton mills, etc), as opposed to the yeomen and academics of the south.

It may be helpful to you if a local asks you to come for tea. Expect not to need to eat for the rest of the day 😉

[groans] I’m just never going to get the hang of this speaking English thing. In many places in the American South, dinner is the big meal of the day, served mid-day and followed by lighter “supper” in the evening.

I’m so honoured! (Did you notice– I even added the extra ‘u’ in your honour…) And thank god for a reader who understands proper tea cupping. When I published my first book, an artist friend painted a picture that included my favourite (extra ‘u’!) cup.

Right, you’ve had it now! I’m going to hand responsibility for this exchange to the feminine mental agility of our graphics editor. When it comes to inappropriate puns this kid is the reigning Queen!
Prepare for prolonged verbal combat! 😀

I enjoyed this from start to finish! I love the way you write! — A few years ago my daughter’s friend visited from Australia, and when I made her a cup of tea with boiled water from a tea kettle, she said it was the only time during her visit to America she had a proper cup of tea! She went on and on about it! I felt honored.(Apparently, my mother did something right.) I look forward to reading more of your posts!

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